Wednesday, March 30, 2005

odd year curse

[This post can be seen as two parts, and the title goes more to the second part.]

Just vorgestern I finally watched Million Dollar Babe Baby on theatres. Abaton, Monday, no ermäßigung because it was holiday, so 15 €. [Sorry Jürg, next time it will be on me, I swear to God.] I got so excited seeing Warnes Bros. Pictures logo came out, followed by Lakeshore Entertainment, which I failed to recognize in the first two seconds. Sheiße!

When the first narration was out, some minutes after I whispered to Jürgen, "I almost don't get the English." Somehow, I managed to get familiar with Morgan Freeman's awesome narration.



I was getting more excited by learning how Hilary Swank's character was introduced in the movie. That lass had just enough expression, quiteness, lighting and angle to be introduced as Maggie Fitzgerald. So damn classy and classic. Furthermore, I was nothing but amazed how Ms. Swank performed in the movie.

But that's it.

Half way through the movie I said that couldn't it be more Hollywood than this? I was absolutely getting bored with the boxing scenes. Absolutely bored. Changed my positions couple of times. I thank God there are still great great scenes to replace the boxing ones.

[spoiler alert: you will find how the story unfolds here, if you'd rather be unspoiled, go along and read the next readable post. If you'd rather be spoiled, then highlight from the star]

*But after the accident that paralyzed Maggie, I said nothing but, now what? A tearjerker? Get me outta here, right now. It's because I never like tearjerkers. I mean I like watching movie and cry for it, but please not because of their sad, hopeless, unfortunate situation. This is the reason why I don't like Grave of the Fireflies, for example. It's just too tiring.

Come to think of it, right now I don't really understand what Danger was doing there. What was really the storyline of this movie, who made what did how to which. What can I expect furthermore? I mean, really.

And I know right there and then that the movie is good, but it will not be my favorite. Wait, what am I talking about. The movie is bad, but Hilary Swank is superb.

Ah well, I think that I just degraded myself to a level where a movie with such rave reviews drawn nothing out of me but boredom. Na ja..

-----

Now what's up with the curse? For almost 15 years I have been following the OSCAR - or the annual academy awards if you may say that. I quit it this year though. And during the 90s, I always dislike their choice in the odd year, with 1993 as exclusion. Here goes the breakdown.

1991 - I leaned towards Bugsy, and then JFK more than the best picture. Bugsy is just simply great, but the Silence of the Lambs? Eh?
1993 - Schindler's List. No argument here.
1995 - I love Sense and Sensibility so much, and still can't understand why Braveheart got it.
1997 - I don't need to explain why I disagree with this one, do I? Hehehe.. LA Confidential is there, and unfortunately, the bloated Titanic is absolutely there.
1999 - Works fine, because there was no Oscar in this year, believe it or not.

No Oscar in 1999, what am I talking about? What about American Beauty?

In 1999, the Academy tried to change how Oscar is being celebrated. In 2000 there is this euphoria, remember? Y2K is everywhere, new millenium, new century, the Y2K bugs, etc. etc. etc. Due to this euphoria, they also want to call the 72nd annual Oscar 2000. Need proof? Check its poster here. Read between the lines, and I quote,

.. the Oscar 2000 poster is printed..

It's easy to map 90s Oscar's Best Pictures in my head due to the odd years, that is why I noticed this change. Due to the change, the next Oscar (73rd) was called Oscar 2001. See again its poster. While in my personal database, i.e. in my head, they are supposed to be Oscar 2000.

I think the inconsistency caused troublesome in their database as well. I remember it one day when they remodeled their database, it was not accessible for quite some time, due to this inconsistency. Notice how they introduce the database: [Year] (xx-th annual). For example: 1995 (68th). And in the old database, American Beauty was really called the winner in the year 2000, which is consistently called the 72nd, so there is no 1999 best picture. Strange, but true. Making me confused, but that's how they did it.

All this mess was organized well, though, because now, they decided to pull the year of the Oscar, and stick to the annual itself, in their publications. 74th annual Academy Awards. 75th annual Academy Awards. 76th annual Academy Awards. And so on. So far. However, the database of winners and publications must suffer now because American Beauty is now best picture in 1999.

For me, I am not diligent or brilliant enough to reorganize what I remember. I remember that in the 90s the odd years' best picture is not my pick, and American Beauty is the best picture in 2000. Following my own consistency, in this 6 years of 2000s, I dislike the academy's pick for 2001, and 2005.

Will the 90s come again to my backyard? I may not be curious enough to find out, anyway.

1 comment:

Mike said...

wow, finally another submit about oscar. well, it's a good one and I think you should stick with it without trying to dispose of what you're good at.